Wednesday, October 10, 2012

LFR: The First Day of MV

I must say that the second looking for raid release was as great as the first one on the first day. All thanks to the fact that the only people that would have the appropriate item level in most cases are the people that actually know how to raid or at the very least try to appear like they are trying.

Sure, there will be people that slipped in. The people that got lucky in randoms unlike me who had to really work to get the item level. The people that got lucky with world drops. The people who crafted their way in. The people that used the auction house to make their way in and last but not least the ones that bought their way in with real money either buying the items online somewhere or the gold online somewhere to gear themselves in.

Those people however were in the minority. The majority of people in the looking for raid that first day were actually decent players. This is why it was a great run.

While I did horrible over all I still managed top 10, which is really different for me, I have never been lower than #3 in a 25 man in any format, LFR, pug, guild, or even filling in for top guilds in at least 4 years. Being less than perfect is something I am not used to but I will chalk that up more to my lack of gear and my unwillingness to enchant crap pieces of gear I know I will be replacing the second I start raiding. I could have done better, I just refused to. I can take some solace in the fact that I did beat two hunters that already had multiple 489 pieces and everything was gemmed and enchanted. So while I felt I did horrible, when compared to them, I did pretty good.

We wiped twice in the run. Once on the second boss because of a messed up pull when people were still outside of the gate and we were waiting on healers and once on the third boss because it seemed not enough knew to go into the totems and kill the adds. No big deal, at least no big deal for real raiders.

After each wipe we joked a little, explained what went wrong, waited for healers and then downed it the next time. No one called anyone names, no one was saying you people are noobs, no one complained a damage dealer was not pulling their weight, or a healer was not pulling their weight, or a tank was not taunting fast enough.

If something needed to be done someone said it, they did not yell it, they did not spam it and they certainly did not call people idiots for not doing it. This was a group of raiders that are middle of the pack raiders. The ones that have not downed normal yet but are still raiders, the ones that will clear normal in the next 3 or 4 weeks most likely but will not rush it.

People always say that the looking for raid is not for raiders it is for people that do not raid to see the content. After a second first day release and seeing how great the looking for raid can be when "those" other people are not in it I am firmly placed in the camp of they are wrong.

Looking for raid is made for raiders. Not hard core raiders, not heroic type raiders or progression raiders but for raiders none the less. Raiders with some skill but less time. Casual raiders, beginner raiders, weekend raiders, retired raiders, part time raiders, anti-social so they don't have a guild or friends raiders, or basically anyone that has the ability to be raid aware which makes them a raider of sorts. It is made for them to see content and do content it is not made for people that are bad players and bad people to see content.

Looking for raid is not meant to see content for people that would never see the inside of a raid anyway if it were not there. It is not meant for people to come and AFK. It is not meant for people that can still not do more than 12K DPS at level 90. It is not meant for tanks that think just beating on the boss with a stick is enough to fill the role of a tank. It is not meant for healers that can't figure out how to heal more than one person effectively and can't even break 8K HPS.

It is meant for the people that were in it yesterday. People that for the most part at least looked up all the fights and had some sort of a clue even if they didn't understand it. People that did not yell and scream at any mistake someone made. People that explained what needed to be done if someone did something wrong instead of insulting them for doing it wrong.

Looking for raid was made for the people that were capable of getting into it on day one and that amazing run, even with the wipes, is proof that the looking for raid was made for them. It was a minor challenge for random people grouped together and worked as a way for them to get gear, see content and get ready for the real raid should they have the time to do that soon.

I like to use it for my raiders so they can see the basic concept of the fights. It is a lot easier to explain in the real raid if they have a basic concept of the fights from the looking for raid. Those are the people the looking for raid is made for. Seeing how great the run was is proof of it. I even have a sort of unspoken rule. I will not bring someone into the real raid unless they have done it in the looking for raid. Like I said, it makes explaining the fights so much easier if people have a clue what you are talking about and seeing it in the looking for raid makes my job as a raid leader for a casual guild 100 times easier.

Beware however, in a matter of a week or two the masses that should not even be allowed to queue up for it will start working their way into and it and the looking for raid will turn back into the load of crap it was at the end of cataclysm. Gear doesn't make the player but gear is the only way to make a wall to get in, too bad the people that should not be there sooner or later will get the gear.

If looking for raid was like this first day raid all the time I would actually consider quitting raiding and only do looking for raid. It is a nice relaxed way to have some fun and get some gear. Too bad the people that shouldn't be there will ruin what could be a beautiful thing soon. It makes an elf want to cry.

A great tool will soon become one of the worst features of the game, just like it did last time. It will happen even faster this time around because the fights seem to be a little harder than they were in the last LFR. If some groups in the last LFR still turned into wipe fests this time around expect to see lots of wipe fests.

So do the looking for raid now if you can, enjoy it while you can, because soon it will turn into hell, a wipe fest, and you will be subjected to rudeness and language that only the dregs of the community can bring.

I think if blizzard were really honest in their desire to let everyone see content they would make a 5 man version of all the raids for those people to see the content. The fact they try to funnel everyone into a raid that most should not be doing proves it is not about seeing content, it is about forcing content on people that they shouldn't be doing or wouldn't want to do it if they were not given a option to queue up for it.

A fair deal of players that I know in my guild that have never raided with us, or rarely raided with us, did the LFR because they could queue for it. Not because they wanted to, but because the option was there and no offense to them, there was a reason they never raided with us and that reason is, they are not raiders.

Looking for raid should be for the people that want to raid, not for the people that queue up for it just because it is there. The people that do it just because it is there are the ones that turn this great feature into hell. At least I got to enjoy one fun run. Maybe I might even get two weeks of good runs in before "those" people make their way into it.

First day LFR gets an A+ from me. But that is because of the people that were in it.

This is a MMO and the people make the game. Good people make for a good game, bad people make for a bad game. In three months I will bet you that the LFR would get an F from me. It will be the same raid, but different people.

Do it while the good people that are fun to play with are there. You won't regret it.

10 comments:

I haven't done LFR yet. Two reasons. 1) My ilevel isn't there yet. I'm 9 points short. The reason for that is I haven't been pugging heroics. I've only ran them with friends which limits the number I can do. However, it's a lot more fun to do it like that and besides 2) We're running it as a group on Saturday. That's when the raid slot is and we can't raid normal yet as we don't have a full group. I've started a new guild, we got 7/10 now, need 3 more dps. So before Saturday we'll run some more heroics together to get the last few points, I can craft some gear and we'll be good to go.

I refuse to run LFR alone due to what the community makes it. I'll run it as a healer and I definitely don't mind running as dps but I won't tank it. The other roles as long as you get on with it then you're invisible pretty much. As a tank you can't do anything right even if you are doing it right. I used to queue as dps or healer and then trade the tokens in for tank gear, but with the new loot system I'll have to go as tank, but I won't go alone.

You're right in that the people that are in LFR aren't capable of what it asks of them. However, if you implement a queue system, remove effort requirement, then you deserve the people you get. It has to be faceroll easy for random groups to even hope to be able to complete it and LFR, and even heroics, aren't like that. I mean the trash in The Shado-Pan Monastery can wipe a guild group if you make a mistake. Group content needs to either be designed so that a trained monkey can do it, and then let that be queueable, or it shouldn't be queueable. LFR by it's design, it being queueable, means that it is designed for the dregs of the community, as they are the ones that need that artificial help. I'm not saying that the looking for system isn't useful. When you've got 4/5 people for a heroic, and you need a 5th, then having the ability to queue is good. Although depending on the 5th you get it might have been easier to 4 man it sometimes.

Blizz are very naive, they must think that everybody is nice, willing to put in the effort for what they want. Well they aren't and it's time blizz realises that. If they want mass group content it has to be so easy that a trained monkey, or the half dozen decent players out of 25, can do it. The looking for system was barely manageable for heroics. For the people that are willing to put in the effort give us more challenge modes. For the queueing dumb it down, way down. Oh and turn off the chat as people only use it to abuse others.

I've always been a supporter of anything that allows to be queued for should be super easy. It needs to be catered to the lowest common denominator like it or not. Adding any degree of difficulty makes it stressful for everyone invloved, good, bad or just there for fun.

I do like the looking for system for what it does, like you said, filling that missing spot when needed. I just don't think fondly of many of the people I run into with it.

At least the heroics are not like they were at the start of cata. At the start of cata having even one person that did not know what to do could wipe you. Now, for the most part, they just find themselves dead. I think that is fine. Unless it happens to be the damn tank over and over again in the halls to that whirlwind the guy does. The fight becomes impossible when the tank and/or healer can not avoid it.

Had a run like that yesterday. The DPS, me a mage and a rogue went all medieval on it and blew everything at the start knowing the healer and tank would die on the whirlwind like they did the previous two attempts. The healer died and the tank did soon after but he lived long enough to hold it some. When he died I put growl on my pet, he did not last long, I feigned when he came for me, the rogue died, the mage died and as he was coming for me again I called stampede, they kept him busy for a bit, he started to go into the whirlwind again, I dropped a trap to slow the adds and ran around in the circle following him, when he made it back to the center I finished him off. Thank god, my hands were shaking, it was exiting, I loved it. So see, even a bad group can sometimes be fun. But that is a rare, rare, rare thing.

My LFR experience went pretty smoothly but I thought the dps was terrible in it. Mine was too as I had just changed keybinds for all my cds so was still getting used to them and like a derp forgot to raid hit and exp cap myself, I had been reforged for dungeons.

I was first on 2/3 and second on the last one. This with barely breaking 50k in 459 equipped with 2 pvp pieces. Of course burst was more than double but I'm talking sustained dps over the course of a fight.

IDK how we only managed to wipe once on the second boss. My dps was only around 50k give or take a k depending on the fight. And I was on top. :/ Shouldn't I have been blown out of the water? Maybe all the "real" raiders were raiding, idk.

Mine was horrible too, I think most were. The fact I did so bad and was still top 10 when I could have easily been doing 10K-15K more shows how off everyone else was as well.

The real raiders might have been raiding be the real occasional and casual raiders were in there and that is why it was smooth.

I have seen people with 80K+ left and right in heroics but none of them were anywhere to be found in the raid. I think that is because the fights lasted longer and the burst had time to cool down. I was usually over 70K 1 minute into the fight but always ended between 35K and 45K. While I am only at 460 equip and completely unenchanted I should be doing at least 55K-60K on a 5 minute fight in my opinion, so I still have a lot to get used to with the BM whack a mole rotation.

The group i joined in seemed to have wiped on first boss... and were blaming tanks. Looking at actual damage, it must have been healers asleep though. I mean explosion for just 30% HP compared to ~70% HP on normal? You could probably pop random raid cd and survive all three exploding together every time - and guildies said other groups did exactly that.

And then other tank obviously weren't understanding how petrification works... he taunted while he had perfect petrification switches sticking to double dog side, expecting a swap when you don't need to do anything at all.

But every boss was down in single try anyway.

On Feng i grabbed Shroud of Reversal and managed to reach #1 spot on damage with 51k dps. I could probably get higher if i'd actually taunted more for vengeance stacks, but state of other tank was only looking a bit dangerous once or twice. With decent healers you can probably single-tank it all the way to the end.

And on Spiritbinder... i think someone was going into spirit realm, which is totally unnecessary in LFR.

Also i didn't do anything on my banishment, which should have killed me... but instead i got put back into normal realm about 5 seconds after being banished, barely enough to look around.

The one I was in tanked all three dogs together as well and we had no problem. I was actually surprised as I was expecting it would be a wipe.

Second boss the tanks seemed to not know about the buffs at all but it got done when we had a full group there and third boss I had a completely different experience on, with no one going in the first attempt it was a wipe.

Perhaps you had better healers in your group. You need to send people in on LFR unless the entire group wants to be carried by the healers.

So basically if a group does not send people in on the third boss and they still beat it, be happy and admit that you were 100% carried by your healers.

Checked last boss in second group which had much lower dps (about 8 epicenters compared to previous group 4 on Feng), and i can see now why it would be required... at one point i got 5 60k bolts under 0.5 second, 4 of them coming literally same millisecond, killing me instantly from ~70% hp.

If you just kill boss faster though, you might get low enough amount of total spirit spawns to heal through - as long as they are timed and not tied to boss HP.

Interesting note - apparently if you queue as different role you can use coin roll for that role, even if you cannot get any boss kill loot... Or maybe they just didn't extend Sha rolls hotfix to LFR and you can roll regardless?

So if I do it as a tank one day and then a healer the next I can roll a coin as a healer but will get no normal loot?

Interesting. I doubt that is intended but that is kind of cool.

DPS can usually fix anything, with enough DPS you can actually start to ignore or cheese some mechanics but even in the watered down looking for raid will find you with people that do sub par (and that is being polite) DPS that even with a few great ones it would even out to still being average.

In the group I was in we had 2 damage dealers under 12K, they should be embarrassed because the #2 healer in the group also had 15K DPS. But that is the way of life. You will always have a few slackers even in good groups.

Wow, that is insane healing. DPS makes sense, I have seen tanks do amazing things in the DPS department, as much as 80K single target from a DK tank. My 441 tank pulls over 30K single target as is, I can only imagine what it will be like when I get gear.